Sky Q & Freesat Setup

comuirch

Probably a stupid question, but i'd appreciate any guidance from those in the know.

I recently got Sky Q installed in our house. My thinking was potentially after the 12 month contract that we could simply go free to air satellite and plug in the Sky cables into a box/satellite tuner enabled TV and do away with subscription services.

I've been trying to test out the available connection for free to air by plugging in the Sky cables to the back of the TV, and using the inbuilt satellite tuner. Unfortunately I can't seem to get any of the BBC/ITV/CH4/etc but it does receive QVC/Dave and a number of other free channels.

At the time of installation I requested a Hybrid LNB on install as i'd read elsewhere that this would be necessary.

Anyone have any idea how I would go about getting the free to air BBC/ITV/CH4?

Will I need to run new cables from the dish?

In case its important, the tuner i'm using is on LG Smart TV

Thanks

Ten Pin

Does the LNB have 2 or 6 ports on it?

2 port LNB is for Sky Q only and won't work fully with non Sky Q.

uck51js9zml2yt

Ten Pin wrote: »

Does the LNB have 2 or 6 ports on it?

2 port LNB is for Sky Q only and won't work fully with non Sky Q.

What do you mean, won't work fully?

Ten Pin

Sky Q is wideband so uses frequencies that are outside the range that a standard satellite receiver (set top box or TV) can tune to.

As a result only the channels within the standard frequency range can be tuned in...so it works...but not fully.

dulpit

Karlee Dry Gorilla wrote: »

What do you mean, won't work fully?

The 2 port LNB for Sky Q is a wideband LNB, which won't work with regular FTA satellite boxes/freesat boxes. When Sky install they will sometimes use a hybrid LNB, which has 2 wideband connectors for Sky Q and another 4 regular connectors which will work with old Sky+ boxes/freesat boxes/etc.

comuirch

LNB has 6 ports, which I saw before he mounted the dish. Beyond that not sure how it has been set up.

If there are 2 ports for Sk Q and these are the wires that have been run to our T V room, dos that mean these cables (for Sky Q) would not work for free to air?

Would it simply be a matter of running cables from some of the other ports?

Thanks

Ten Pin

All 6 ports should self adjust to the box it's connected to.

May take a bit of trial and error...

Switch off power to everything (TV, Sky Box)

Unplug both sat cables from Sky box

After 5 minutes plug in sat cable to TV

Turn on power to TV and switch on.

Try to tune in sat channels on TV.


If that doesn't work then swapping cables at the LNB to a different port may help but you shouldn't have to do that.

Johnboy1951

Would it be necessary for BOTH coax cables to be disconnected from the Sky Q box to allow any one to be used with a standard FTA tuner?

Ten Pin

Only speculating but if one of the cables is still connected to Sky box it might get a signal to only give wideband signal on both cables as they are the only cables connected to LNB.

The Cush

There are 2 types of hybrid LNB, a smart hybrid that Sky fit at install and a non-smart version from Labgear that can be purchased commercially.

The Sky version auto detects the type of receiver connected to each output but the Labgear version has 2 fixed wideband outputs for SkyQ and 4 legacy outputs for standard satellite receivers.